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SAYING YOU’RE BIPOLAR AND HOW YOU GIVE INFORMATION ON SOCIAL MEDIA

I’ll be the first to admit that I get annoyed/irritated/frustrated easily. Most of the time I keep it to myself. I also get hurt easily and keep this to myself too. It’s easier to keep feeling hurt hidden. But eventually all those feelings I keep swallowing down are going to come out somehow, someway.

When it comes to my own personal story I try to be as honest as I can. The only thing I get wrong are dates and years because I can’t remember them.

I was on Twitter recently and a person I follow replied to someone that they are bi-polar. That’s how he spelled it. I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. He is someone who is well known and does have a right to some privacy. I had seen it mentioned in a few different places but never directly from him. I decided to take a chance and reply to his Tweet. I replied “Were you being serious about being Bipolar? You don’t have to answer. You have a right to privacy but as someone who is diagnosed as Bipolar I wouldn’t wish it on my worse enemy.” I was hoping he would understand that if he was joking he shouldn’t be and if he wasn’t joking I understood. He rarely replies to people unless he knows them. I have no problem with that. He will block you in heartbeat if you say anything he doesn’t like or agree with. So far he hasn’t blocked me.

However, I did want to scream when I read one young woman’s reply to mine. It said “I’m curious myself. I was diagnosed as a teen but I’ve learned to control it. DISCIPLINE X 1000” Ummm…. So she can control her Bipolar Disorder with extra, extra, discipline? Well I must not be trying hard enough then. My dad and sister are right I just want to be alone and depressed all the time because if I didn’t wouldn’t I try harder to control it?

I must like to try new medications that give me vertigo, nausea, diarrhea, headaches and don’t work. I must have loved ECT and being held against my will for longer than I should have been while crying for anyone to come and get me. I even contemplated jumping through the big glass window not caring that there were bars on the other side.

This is what happens when I read shit like this. When I read how people have “recovered” from their mental illness by “discipline” or “colored candles” or “chanting in a circle to The Moon Goddess”. I get angry. It lessens my struggle that I go through to wake up every single Goddamn day and stay alive. And lately I keep asking myself “For what? FOR WHAT?!” A father who can’t hear me and doesn’t talk to me. A sister who is annoyed or ashamed by me so she doesn’t talk to me. I do get to clean up after my father because his vision is bad and he can’t see where the toilet is. That’s something, right? That makes me useful.

One trip to the grocery store and I am in pain for days. No one listens. No one cares. Men have literally watched me struggle to lift a case out of my carriage and done nothing to help. Just watched. I know I look better than I did at 250 pounds but you can’t tell me they are excited by watching me trying to lift water. Maybe they are. I’ve stopped caring. At least the young guys working there run to help me. If it wasn’t for one of them I would’ve passed out last week. This low blood pressure/low heart rate thing sucks.